Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 464
December 18, 2012
The Millennium Falcon: Keeping dreams alive through James Luceno and Chris Lee
One of the questions I get asked most often is how I have remained so diversified over the years, and so passionate over such a wide variety of subjects and still maintain my optimism. My answer is often difficult and obscure in articulating, and most do not understand once they have heard it, but symbols are a powerful ally into healing the mind from the many unfathomable tribulations it might encounter in a lifetime—and when a mind beholds a symbol it holds in reverence, it becomes possible to always calibrate ones thoughts to the values that are most functional, and beloved. Religions often use such symbols to focus their minds on eternity, or spiritual awakening. Voodoo priests use symbols to focus their minds to speaking to those who have crossed over dimensional understanding. Shamans use symbols to invoke focus on the problems at hand that only have answers in the world of the unknown. I have always needed something that does all that and more, and for me, the symbol that I most reverently adhere to is the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars, the intergalactic starship that is the hero of the entire saga, and has been a representation of complete freedom as shown in that fantasy epic from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
The picture shown above is one that I have had on my freestanding Craftsman tool box that I have had for years as I worked in machine shops and other assembly plants where exotic tools were needed to perform the task at hand, and as every real man knows, the size of a man’s tool box says a lot about the level of the mind that owns it, and their ability to solve problems—and my tool boxes have always been big. While my co-workers would fill their opened tool box lids with pictures of women in various states of undress, hot rod cars, and images from their favorite sports teams, my tool box had pictures of the Millennium Falcon pasted all over it as it has been a long-standing dream of mine to build an actual full-scale model of that famous movie space ship, and looking at those old construction photos from The Empire Strikes Back has always inspired me to think outside the box, and to never allow my mind to linger on the impossible. The Millennium Falcon for me is a symbol of always having hope, never surrendering even when the odds are terrible, and trusting that effort will always triumph over technical superiority. I wrote recently about my intention to build a real Millennium Falcon for $15 million dollars that actually flies with anti-gravity technology. CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW. In Tennessee there is a small group that is planning to build a replica of the Millennium Falcon for similar education purposes, which I am very excited to see. CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO VISIT AND OFFER SUPPORT:
I adore people like those at Full Scale Falcon.com. I wish the world was filled with more of them.
I have made it no secret that the car in my new novel Tail of the Dragon was inspired heavily from the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars and many times in my life, I have looked reverently to that classic star ship to reset my thinking on any given topic. My wife can attest that I engage the engines to my electronic Millennium Falcon that sits right next to our bed every night before I go to sleep. So I did what I promised myself I would do after a contentious election season in 2012 and that is give myself a break. I decided to rest from all the heavy-duty philosophy and history that I typically read and pulled a book off our book selves that my wife read last year and had been urging me to give a chance, James Luceno’s novel called Millennium Falcon.
To be honest I did not think the book would be any good and the reason I did not read it earlier was because I needed to finish a few books ahead of it on the Star Wars timeline from the Legacy of the Force series, so just picking the book up to read was not as easy as just reading one book. Millennium Falcon is a sort of bridge book between the Legacy series and the Fate of the Jedi series, so I didn’t want to spoil anything for myself. I waited till I had a chance to get to it when I wasn’t so busy. After the election and all the very heavy reading I did after November 6th 2012 going through books like War and Peace, The Golden Bough and many others, I decided to catch up on some of the Star Wars books from the Legacy and Fate series as well as the Old Republic novels.
James Luceno’s book Millennium Falcon was marvelous, and well worth the wait. I didn’t know how much I had been wanting to read it, or how much I would enjoy it, because the story is about the 100 year lifespan of the Millennium Falcon from its construction on an assembly line to almost the events that will lead up to the new films that Disney is about to produce, Episodes 7 through 9. In the Millennium Falcon’s long history under many different owners featuring crime lords, galactic pirates, rogue politicians, fortune hunters, medical innovators, circus performers, and rebel heroes it is literally a star ship that has launched a thousand fates—perhaps billions. The Millennium Falcon is to Star Wars what the Black Pearl is to Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. The Millennium Falcon is a hot rod pirate ship and is simply the coolest piece of technology ever put into a movie. Unlike other famous movie star ships, the Falcon represents individuality, and freedom which is why I behold it as a symbol still after all these years.
I enjoyed every page thoroughly of Luceno’s book as he takes readers on a heck of a fun story into the Millennium Falcon’s past which was unknown previously in the Star Wars mythology. I didn’t think it would be possible for a skeptical 45 year-old man to be as excited as a 10-year-old boy over a fictional symbol of freedom in a galaxy that only exists in the mind. But after reading the book it made me think even more seriously about someday walking through a real Millennium Falcon that I build for real function, or one like the good people at Full Scale Falcon.com are building to inspire a whole new generation of young people to reach for the stars. The Millennium Falcon has a special place in the hearts and minds of millions and as this evolution has occurred I am more proud than ever that I displayed those original construction pictures so prominently on my tool box, which are still there. The only difference is that the big stand up unit I used for staying gainfully employed is now in my garage. That tool box got me through some hard times as I worked excessively hard to make a living for my growing family, and never let my co-workers provoke me into removing my pictures of the Millennium Falcon from my tool box in favor of girls in bikinis. I can honestly say that the Millennium Falcon is sexier than any lingerie model in any state of super normal sign stimuli pose.
I feel that my life has reflected the fictional history of the Millennium Falcon after reading the Luceno novel, which I never would have known prior. But there is something destructive and positive at the same time in reaching for one’s individual freedom and sovereignty, and the Millennium Falcon represents that quest. And I’m not alone in my sentiments. Good people like Chris Lee at Full Scale Falcon.com feel it as strongly as I do, and are taking actions to make the Millennium Falcon a reality that young people can touch, smell, and walk through—and from those young minds are the next great inventions that will bestow upon the human race a wave of miracles that will usher in a new day in the long story of all of us. Everything starts with a thought, and a symbol can hold those thoughts into focus as the turbulence of life tries to wash away our dreams. Holding onto our symbols can keep those dreams anchored to the foundations of our souls.
That is why I LOVE the Millennium Falcon!
Rich Hoffman
December 17, 2012
‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ an unexpected TRIUMPH
I have been writing about The Hobbit movie and its December release for over a year now and I have been very excited for its long-awaited arrival in theaters. My wife and I took my large family and some of their friends to see it during a prime time showing over the weekend, and before I get into any kind of review I need to provide some context. Our society is changing rapidly, and not all of it is bad. When religion was very strong in our society, it taught young and old alike about the nature of good and evil—which I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about. But in 2012 in a quest that really started in 1977 with the first Star Wars film, it is clear that mythological values in our society has moved from books into many other visual formats that explore more deeply than ever the nature of evil, and the necessity of good. I did not expect The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey to be over-the-top excellent. I just expected it to be good and an enjoyable tribute to stories I have loved my entire lifetime. As stated in previous articles here at the OW I have allowed myself to enjoy on many nights the words of J.R.R. Tokens’ many works by candlelight, or on a backyard porch under swift moving nighttime clouds next to a lantern. So I have a passion already present for the material offered in The Hobbit. Aside from that, I also followed closely the development of the film through the legal hurdles it had to pass in order to arrive in theaters under Peter Jackson’s direction, which for a long time I never thought would happen—because of the stunning success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy a decade ago. So it was with some pent-up reverence that I took my family to the movies on December 15, 2012 and let me declare that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an unexpected delight. The Hobbit as a film is jaw-dropping great and filled to the absolute brim with passion, rich storytelling, and a fully flushed out journey into Middle-Earth that will change the lives of many people who see it for the better. It is a stunningly fantastic movie—a cut from the tapestry of cinema that will set new heights of expectation from audiences permanently. I did not think it was possible to make a movie version of The Hobbit that exceeded, or even matched the effort of Lord of the Rings—but Peter Jackson has been successful in that daunting task and then some.
The Hobbit is essentially a treasure hunt that is triggered when a dragon pushes a society of dwarves from their home in the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins is recruited as a burglar/thief to penetrate the mountain and help remove the terrible dragon Smoug who is now residing there bathing his massive body in mountains of gold stolen from the dwarves. I will admit that reviewers did discourage me a bit when they reported that Warner Brothers had pushed Jackson into stretching the 300-page book of The Hobbit which is a kid’s book into three—three hour films, and that the first half of An Unexpected Journey was boring. For such reviewers, I can only say that they have become spoiled brats, and the action of The Hobbit was very intense at the end making the rather story driven beginning seem like a very different movie. But the beauty is that Jackson was able to make The Hobbit into a better story then the actual book was—which is almost never the case—without violating the literary material of Tolkien at all. Only under Peter Jackson’s direction could this have been done with such a close association with Lord of the Rings as The Hobbit takes place 60 years before the Rings films. The beginning is only boring compared to a very intense ending—more intense than any movie I can remember seeing—and I’ve seen most of them.
For me personally, I found the deep secrets and constant references to an evil that is slowly seething up into Middle-Earth to be fascinating in reference to the events of Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit takes the time to show how the seeds of evil are actually planted and how slowly over time they can emerge right under the noses of some of the wisest minds. In The Hobbit it is the wizard Gandalf who looks like a crazed fool in comparison to his mentor Sauruman the White Wizard, Elrond the Lord of Rivendell, and Galadriel co-ruler of Lothlórien. Gandalf in a scene that was one of my favorites attempts to tell these leaders of Middle-Earth of his devious plot to rid the Lonely Mountain of the dragon, but also to combat a seething evil that is emerging slowly in the cracks of society. It was my favorite scene in the film because I feel a lot like Gandalf in real life uttering the same kinds of warnings, schemes and mechanisms that I have involved myself in only to have a White Wizard type politician declare—“show me the proof of these allegations.” Evil does not grow within the honesty of critical assessment, and nobody but Gandalf and Galadriel can even remotely see it. Of course, we know that Gandalf was right and that 60 years later that evil will have arrived fully in Middle-Earth in the events of Lord of the Rings. In An Unexpected Journey Gandalf sees the evil before everyone else, and must face that realization alone—which is realistically, often the case.
In many ways Peter Jackson has done with The Hobbit what George Lucas did with the prequels of Star Wars and that is to pull back wide on Middle-Earth to tell of the events that led up to the Academy Award winning movies that were previously done. But Jackson has not violated the original Tolkien material to perform the task, he’s only added to it with previously unrelated Tolkien material about Middle-Earth which led to controversy with some critics. Usually in novel translations things get left out of a movie version of a great book. It is not often—if ever that things that were not specifically in the source novel find their way into the film version without deviating away from the source, but following it sincerely. This is what Jackson has done, and he did an absolutely marvelous job of it. Literally breath-taking in just how spectacular of a job he did—if viewers thought that Middle-Earth had been adequately flushed out in the Lord of the Rings films, The Hobbit will prove that there is much more to explore, and it is an exciting adventure all its own.
I am an old fan of these types of stories, and it is hard to impress me. But—The Hobbit impressed me in every category, music, visual effects, character development, mythological significance, plot validation; The Hobbit is successful in every single category of filmmaking splendor. And the characters go through one cliffhanger after another in some of the most astonishing conflicts that have ever taken place between characters on a movie screen. There is nothing like The Hobbit that has ever been done in any film to date. Many of the sequences step up and over Lord of the Rings in sheer brutality, and cinematic effectiveness. If the Academy Awards snub this film because of internal Hollywood politics, it will be a shame—because The Unexpected Journey deserves the same kind of respect that Return of the King garnered. This first Hobbit film is simply that good.
Rich Hoffman
December 16, 2012
Tom Cruise in the film ‘Jack Reacher’: The Future of ‘Tail of the Dragon?’
The number one comment that readers of my new novel Tail of the Dragon ask me is when will it be a movie, because the car chase in the book—which takes place over half of the story is so stunningly exciting that they want to see it up on the silver screen. I have been telling them that it’s not likely to be soon, because Hollywood isn’t making many car chase films these days, not like they did in the 1970s, which was my inspiration behind the book. On top of that–I am a conservative writer, and while Hollywood does endorse far left political activists like George Clooney and Sean Penn, it does not have a tolerance for people as fiscally and socially conservative as I am. So the list of producers and actors out there that would be able to take Tail of the Dragon from a novel and put it up on a movie screen in the manner that it is written is pretty short.
The other big problem is that the main character of Rick Stevens is so iconic, and strong that Hollywood isn’t producing actors that are able to reach the kind of emotional firmness that can capture the hero of Tail of the Dragon with the proper valor required. In these more politically left leaning times, characters like Rick Stevens are way too sure of themselves, and that is currently out of fashion in American film—where it used to be common place in Hollywood. Tail of the Dragon is in essence dedicated to all the great car chases of my youth set into overdrive. To accurately portray the high-speed chases that Rick Stevens embarks on in Tail of the Dragon it would require an actor like Steve McQueen, or a Burt Reynolds type who is actually a tough guy in real life–a thrill seeker, and would need to be a professional driver in some regard. Because the stunts that would be required to put Tail of the Dragon up on the silver screen would be unlike anything ever filmed before in any motion picture—so I don’t have much hope of finding the right combination of studio involvement, actor skill level, and financial commitment. CLICK HERE FOR SOME OF MY PREVIOUS WORK IN HOLLYWOOD. That is until I saw the clip below on Top Gear discussing the new Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher—which looks very promising.
It would take an actor/producer like Tom Cruise to bring the larger than life character of Rick Stevens to film, and it appears Cruise is back in that kind of character generating business, as his Jack Reacher looks like the kind of old-fashion throwback to the decades prior to 1990 filmmaking. That shouldn’t surprise me as Cruise is from Cincinnati just as Steven Spielberg is along with George Clooney and it takes someone from the Midwest to understand a story that takes place in the heart of the country. Tail of the Dragon is truly a modern version of Smokey and the Bandit and the great Tom Cruise classic Days of Thunder, so Tom Cruise would be a good fit—if the stars lined up properly.
I knew when I wrote the novel that it was a bit out of fashion in the present day as it makes no attempt to be contemporary except for the fact that the 700 HP 1977 Firebird in the story runs off a special vegetable oil fuel mixture which is very much in line with modern technical achievement, but the rest of the story is good ol ‘fashioned storytelling that is unapologetic in its larger-than-life presentation. I figured that sometime over the next 20 years such personal valor as exhibited from Rick Stevens in Tail of the Dragon would come back into style, and at that time there might be a chance for such a grand story to find its way to the silver screen.
I am delighted to see that Tom Cruise is back at it with Jack Reacher because honestly, I have missed these types of films terribly. The Fast and Furious films are good, but there is human nobility that is missing from those characters that is all too common in so many modern stories. Tom Cruise made his living for many years playing larger than life characters in films like Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Mission Impossible, so there are still actors/producers in Hollywood who are capable of getting behind the wheel of a car like the one in Tail of the Dragon and telling the story of Rick Stevens and his bold, high-speed adventure through the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.
In the meantime, I think I’m going to go see Jack Reacher and relish in Tom Cruise’s latest movie. There is a part of me that is rooting for Cruise to make a comeback to the silver screen, because honestly, I think Hollywood needs him.
To learn more about Tail of the Dragon CLICK HERE.
And how fast is Tail of the Dragon? CLICK HERE!
Rich Hoffman
December 15, 2012
Public Education is more Dangerous than Guns: Why the Sandy Hook Shooting makes people anguish
I was a bit baffled by the panic that the collective nation felt in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. I understand the sadness, but to hear news personalities and politicians so distraught—to see the nation turning on their televisions after work and mashing their faces against the screens wanting to learn more information goes several steps beyond simple grief. There was a fear invoked by the events of December 14th, 2012 where a 20-year-old shooter walked into a school and gunned down over twenty people, mostly kids, before taking his own life, that exceeds rationality and the reason is not what anyone is willing to discuss.
My thoughts about public education have evolved over the last couple of years from something that I previously tolerated as a local nuisance to a national menace of the American psyche. I have learned through my school levy fights that most parents don’t care one iota what their kids are learning in school, or what damage to their social futures that government schools might do to their children over 13 years of elementary school and high school education. Parents simply view public education as a babysitting service while they conduct their busy lives climbing a career ladder hoping that instead of love for their children they can purchase respect with the incomes they’ve earned from their occupations. Some parents do get involved in their children’s education, particularly in sports. However, many of these parents deep down inside hope their children’s participation in extracurricular activities will save money through scholarship earnings when it comes time to pay for college tuition leaving some of the savings that parents toiled over for years free for a nice vacation. The sports participation is not one of love for the child as much as it is hope that their child will land a cherished scholarship. It is rare to see parents in modern America taking an active role in their children’s education because they figure that is the job of the school—and in the back of their minds, the parents reserve the right to blame the school and the teachers for their failures as parents when things go wrong later. That is the essence of modern public education in government schools. The labor unions are happy to exploit this trend to their advantage, and they have. Politicians are happy to exploit the guilt parents feel over their lack of involvement to enrich themselves as social looters. But the real victims have always been the kids who just want parents to love them, teach them, and launch them into a life of their own with some measure of confidence—which they often find completely void.
So I did not feel stunned as others might have when hearing about the Sandy Hook shooting. In fact, due to the social conditions involved on all sides, I am surprised that it doesn’t happen more often. The failure is truly in social collectivism, where parents, kids, and politicians have embedded themselves into each other’s lives like mashed potatoes on a Thanksgiving Day dinner to be consumed by modern society and defecated out as waste products of a life dedicated to serving the collective whole. When it comes to gun violence and the most vulnerable places that they are occurring with the most emotional impact, it is in school settings that they are most rampant. This latest rampage, coming less than two weeks before Christmas, was the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre that claimed 33 lives in 2007. Before that it was the Columbine shooting that was so glorified by the communist leaning Michael Moore film Bowling for Columbine.
The logical conclusion that one could make if they thought clearly on the matter is that if parents wanted their children to be truly safe, and to get a proper education that they would home-school their children instead of sending them to a public school full of unarmed progressive advocates where the children are vulnerable to the collective whims of society. It is in such whims that distorted minds like Adam Lanza can make victims of unarmed children and naive human beings who prefer the peace sign over the barrel of a gun with a continued belief that evil can be legislated out of Earth’s social fabric. People who think in such ways are the real danger to children because they are functioning from a false philosophy that is not driven by logic, but by their own internal selfishness. They do not wish to take the time to raise their own children properly so they send them to public school hoping the government can do it for them—but in so doing, their children are vulnerable to progressive politics, global power grabs, collective identity, and the barbarous malcontents of mental erosion.
My wife and I never left our kids to the fate of public education. My wife was always a stay-at-home mom who drove my kids to school every day and helped them with their homework every night. She also home-schooled them when the school wanted to teach my kids things we didn’t think they should be learning in the fourth grade—such as sex education. Most of what my kids learned they learned with the input of my wife and me spending time with them and taking an active role in their lives which still exists to this day. Many of my kid’s friends they went to school with who had parents who did not take an active role in their child’s lives, are rudderless despots drowning in the oceans of daily living, and that fate was sealed by their parents who used public education to do the job of parenting. We have watched the decline first hand over the last decade and the differences are incredibly obvious.
It is dangerous to place children in large groups unarmed in a school room that only has one door in or out and is guarded by pacifist progressive leaning teachers radicalized by national teachers unions. The policies of progressivism are failing in modern life, and there will be more incidents like the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. There will be more because all the sorrow in the world can’t remove evil from the planet. Evil cannot be controlled by more rules and regulation. It cannot be quelled by guidance councilors or even more tax money. Success in every American child requires a parent or mentor who will take direct responsibility for a child with real love and understanding that is rooted in individual responsibility. The collectivism that is taught in modern society will produce many more troubled youth like Adam Lanza and leave millions of children perpetually vulnerable in classrooms all over the country because parents use public education as an extension of day care leaving complacent employees to safe guard the lives of Americas children—which is a recipe for disaster.
If parents really wanted their kids to be safe, they would withdrawal them from public school, teach them at home on a computer with online education within the safety and sanctity of private property guarded by American sovereignty, and one of the spouses would quit their full-time job and become a full-time parent because that’s what it takes. The fear that society felt on the day of the dreadful Sandy Hook Massacre was not because of the victims—it was the realization that a system that most everyone has accepted as “good” is actually a very vulnerable environment that is well out of the control of the parents. That vulnerability has been glazed over while busy parents pursue their individual careers, but the knowledge that a crazed lunatic can walk into any public school known to be full of unarmed—naive human beings is a lucrative target for the mentally anguished like Adam Lanza. The fear that people felt upon hearing the news is that what they believed to be safe is quite the opposite, and if they want to keep their kids out of the grips of deaths embrace, or the many social pressures that lead to small losses of innocence, that the parents will have to take more active roles in their family’s lives. And if I were them, I would take my children out of public school and do the job myself—so that I could ensure safety and success. The grief that people are feeling is not for the unfortunate victims and their families, it is the realization that the responsibility for children cannot be pawned off on a group collective, but are the sole enterprises of a parent and their children, and is best protected with a personal firearm, a solid peace-loving religion, and a thirst for learning that is as free of social degradation as possible.
Rich Hoffman
December 14, 2012
The Connecticut Shooting and Alex Jones: Gun grabbers call for the murder of NRA’s president
When it comes to progressives and gun grabbing lunatics, nothing surprises me regarding what extremes change agents of personal liberty will embark upon to instigate their visions for human kind. It would appear that 20-year-old Adam Lanza had a disagreement with his mother who was a teacher causing him to shoot her in the face killing her, then proceeded to her classroom to kill his mother’s students. It would be an obvious assumption that Lanza was jealous of the students his mother taught, and was so enraged by them that he wanted to remove them from life. The result of this act of violence is 28 people dead, twenty who were little children.
But the swiftness that Obama, Eric Holder and the other progressive advocates jumped to the gun grabbing argument is oddly suspicious. Within hours emotionally charged, panic driven neurotics called out for the murder of the NRA President looking for a way to channel their helpless anger. CLICK BELOW to read more:
But………………I have learned not to take these stories at face value. There is more to this story, and gun legislation is always behind it. The timing of this latest tragic occurrence, on the back of other incidents that have not moved the hearts and minds of most Americans is deeply troubling. Alex Jones has a background in conspiracy theory, but his thoughts deserve recognition in the wake of this tragedy. The villains are still lingering in the shadows of our society. If they are not directly involved, as Alex suggests, they are guilty in that they have destroyed the American family through their policies, and weakened the back of America by robbing citizens of their inner valor. Remember the motto of the progressive, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” And sometimes, the crises must be created through any method possible.
I do believe that progressives are so evil that they are not beneath such treachery or sinister mechanisms. CLICK HERE to review the recent Aurora shooting and the possible “false flag” that happened there. Believe dear reader that Adam Lanza may have easily been “nudged” into the evil he conducted. To understand how, read Cass Sunstein’s book “Nudge.”
Rich Hoffman
More Proof Obama’s White House is Red: Communists in American Government
Jeffrey Immelt–Obama’s jobs council head and the CEO of General Electric proved that he is a far inferior replacement to his protégé Jack Welsh when he said about China’s economic power that one thing “actually works” in governance and that is “state-run Communism” in China. Such comments show a lack of worldly understanding about demographic tendencies between people in the East versus the West, and a lack of understanding about what makes China work as an economy—and how dependent they actually are on The United States economy, and technology developed under capitalism. China has been good at stealing Western technology through an intense spy network, and forcing their workers to do things that would be unheard of in The United States, and these are the sources of their modern-day success, not a superior political philosophy. For more about the conditions of China from the standpoint of a citizens living under communism in that country refer to a previous article I have written by CLICKING HERE.
CEOs and political pundits often don’t understand how facts are strung together behind the scenes; they tend only to look only at bottom-line results, or just a small piece of the overall picture. They look at China and see over 1 billion people who are outpacing the GDP of America but they don’t see the crash course that China is on culturally. Communist China would easily be in jeopardy if America turned its policies of socialism back to capitalism preventing so much manufacturing from fleeing to China to avoid organized labor in the states. States in America are doing just that by passing right-to-work legislation to stop the manufacture bleeding that has been taking place, and if such things become common place in America, along with tax breaks, businesses will flee China for America in a heart beat. But such things were not on the mind of Charlie Rose who brought up “the ‘growth rate’ of China has been falling from double digits to about eight percent,” as Immelt chimed in, “Look, I think it’s good for China,” he said. “To a certain extent, Charlie, 11 to 12 percent is unsustainable. You end up getting too much stimulus or a misallocation of resources. They are much better off working on a more consumer-based economy, less dependent on exports, driving technology and innovation harder. Really, the one thing that actually works, state-run communism may not be your cup of tea, but their government works.” You can read more about this at the link below:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/head-of-obamas-jobs-council-state-run-communism-actually-works/
The reason the Chinese government works under communism is because the people of China are collectivists by their nature—dictated by their religion and other cultural background criteria. Americans are not, but the public education system driven by current government policies are attempting to make Americans into collectivists so that communism will be received as a world-wide philosophy. This was one of the key attempts of The Department of Education when it was founded in 1979, and is not news that comes out of conspiracy theory. The information is clear for anyone who wishes to Google it—but few desire to acknowledge such a terrible truth—because it’s inconvenient. But for a validation of the depth of communist penetration into the American government, and public education system read this American Thinker article:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/pay_no_attention_to_the_commun.html
Communism only works if the society is mindless, and inquisitively evasive. It takes “no thinking” to make a society into a communist one, and it doesn’t take a miracle to produce 1 billion brain-dead drones who can manufacture goods for a fraction of what it costs in The United States, if those drones do not question their reality. And many communists are willing to trade thinking for comfort, which is the clear message in today’s public schools. Young people are taught to take orders, follow directions, and comply with authority. They are not taught to rebel, to think for themselves, to revel in their own independence. Those types of behaviors are discriminated against in the society of government workers, and their brain-dead products.
People like Jeffrey Immelt and his boss Barack Obama don’t value individuality even though Immelt is politically listed as a Republican. Such Republicans are of the “progressive” type, which is clearly indicated by his statement about China. America, as it is now, would never comply with government orders, put up with the government restrictions on personal liberty, and absorb the loss of such personal luxury as the Chinese do while still showing up to work each day to work for bread and water. Only a communist country of conquered people can get by with something like that—and the big government types are trying in America—but they will fail.
If China were held to the same regulatory standards as The United States is with socialist labor unions, aggressive EPA regulations, and a standard of living that expects more than 1000 SF of living space per person and all the food they can eat, China will find it’s economic growth evaporate in a flash. And in the future, that is how America can beat China economically, by loosening the regulations, the taxes, and the socialism from labor unions, then America will thrive once again—because behind the mind of Americans is a thriving mind that craves individual freedom, and behind the oriental is a dominated collectivist that is easily controlled by authority lacking imagination as an entire country totaling millions upon millions of blank thinkers. All together, they cannot compete creatively with the average American not because their minds are less—but because their political and spiritual philosophy limits them to restrictions of their imaginations—which are the ultimate fuel behind economic development.
Government looters ignore such facts, and it is for those reasons that they are so incredibly inept as managers, leaders, and financial tycoons.
Rich Hoffman
December 13, 2012
Doc Thompson Fights for Detroit: Michigan becomes a Right-to-Work State
The biggest mistake that all organized labor advocates make is that they believe collective bargaining is a viable device for gaining wages, which it is not. From the employer’s point of view, wages are the way employers can motivate the best and brightest of their work force to excel, which ultimately sifts the bad workers from the good, the lazy from the ambitious. In the game of football and other sports, there is a tryout process, and players that excel because of their skill and ambition are the ones who often end up making the most money. Collective bargaining destroys this entire discovery endeavor. It imposes upon the revenue generating entity an equal distribution of wages that all the employees do not deserve, because not all employees perform equally. It is this very economic misconception that has destroyed the economy of Detroit, and is why the city is considering Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy protection after years of gradual decline. The city was built by the car industry, and the unions killed the car making business in Detroit. To understand why, just read Atlas Shrugged written in 1957 for the long answer. Here is a USA Today article on the issue.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/10/march-toward-bankruptcy-detroit/1758305/
It was good to see my old friend Doc Thompson who is now doing radio in Detroit acting as he did when he was in Cincinnati and that is pointing out where the discrepancy is in perception between public sector unions and economic reality. As Michigan has looked at Detroit and learned some hard lessons, they have come to realize that the best way to bring business back to the state is by passing right-to-work legislation as Indiana has, and Wisconsin. As predicted the unions have taken to the streets in an all out assault to defend their legal rights to loot and pillage from the American tax payer. Doc had some wonderful appearances on the Kudlow Report on CNBC talking about this very volatile issue.
When Doc was in Cincinnati as a radio personality he hosted a debate between factions involving Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 which was in essence an attempt to make public unions a right-to-work option, which of course the unions attacked heavily out of fear that if employees had the freedom to join a union without coercion, that most employees would elect to not pay the union dues—which is all the unions really care about. The money they make off union dues gives them lobby power over politics. Doc handled the radical crowd fairly. CLICK HERE FOR A REVIEW. I was a much bigger supporter of Senate Bill 5 than Doc was at the time because I saw it as a chance to take control of our local government politics away from public sector unions—which was essential to keeping taxes minimized. But now that Doc is in Detroit, he can see clearly what the unions have done to that once great city, and he has stepped up to the front line to fight the parasite that the unions have made of themselves at the expense of South Michigan’s entire economy.
The villain of Detroit is the labor unions that are rooted in communism that is forced upon employers with “collective bargaining.” Labor unions controlling management that are in the business of making goods like cars, cans of beer, and paper find that through “collective bargaining” the cost matrix of operating a business pushes up their labor costs way too much for a business to properly function, so the business locates to a state, or a country where they can control their labor costs. Labor union’s answer to this trend is to spread communism to every corner of the world so that businesses have nowhere to go and thus no option but to pay employees through “collective bargaining” extraordinarily high wages that most of them do not deserve. This is why public schools are failing, because bad teachers and good teachers all make the same amount of money no matter what they do, so failure is incentivized. Businesses, like sports and other entertainment have survived under high organized labor costs because the public has so far supported the extraordinary mark-ups in the product to subsidize the collective bargaining impact. But even those industries are about 10 years away from total collapse of their profit profiles. Movie actors are paid too much as ticket prices at the box office have capped out, which will lead to a recession in the movie business. And sports franchises are hitting the same cap, the public can’t afford in general to spend more than $200 for a football game so the profit matrixes for the NFL are about to hit a brick wall as well. But that brick wall hit Detroit many years ago as companies like Toyota, and Honda have made better cars cheaper than the union wages of Detroit, leading to a collapse of that industry.
Michigan will be a right-to-work state, and Ohio will follow shortly thereafter. They will become freedom to work states because the economy demands these actions. Anything else leads to direct socialism, which will choke off the economy and send too many American citizens to welfare programs to survive, which will collapse the GDP of our nation, so there isn’t a choice. The only fools who haven’t received the memo are the union workers who want to believe that pixy dust will save their hides from their own stupidity—and the Keynesian economics that politicians like Barack Obama subscribe to, which is destroying the economy of Europe presently, will have to be abandoned. These are facts that cannot be ignored, even though all politicians who cozy up to organized labor practices “evasion” in denying the facts of economic reality.
No economy can flourish if the potential for profit from the job creators is taken away, and labor unions take away from management the tools designed to produce wealth. Once a company loses its ability to manage their costs, and can no longer raise their price to off-set the labor costs, they have no choice but to file bankruptcy, or move their business to a more business friendly environment. However, in the case of Detroit, the entire city cannot just pick up and move, it will simply fail, and become part of a long list of once thriving areas that prospered economically for a time, then failed under their own stupidity. Detroit will join cities such as the Native American city of Cahokia, the mysterious, Teotihuacan, or Ankor Wat all which found their previous flourishing economic periods erode away due to droughts, disease, poor crop yields, or just political corruption which had the city of Chichen Itza on decline before the Spanish ever set foot on the Yucatan Peninsula. Detroit is failing because it cannot manufacture goods to export, and people are abandoning the city because there are no jobs, and those jobs where ran out-of-town because of labor unions. The economic failure is unlike those other ancient cities. Detroit is a victim of self-imposed greed, and lack of proper economic understanding. I feel honored to know Doc Thompson personally and see that he is still fighting for what’s right, even when it might otherwise be unpopular, or socially unfashionable. The fix to Detroit’s problems, or America’s are not to glaze over the obvious economic facts of organized labor failures, but to fix the problem before one of America’s once great cities becomes only a distant memory. Right-to-work cannot come soon enough for the poor state of Michigan.
Read more at the link below:
Rich Hoffman
December 12, 2012
The Joys of Christmas: What to put under the tree this year?
I do love Christmas for all the reasons that tradition holds. I suspect that many people are lost to those reasons as culturally society has failed them. I noticed the longing gaze in the eye of a bank teller the other day when I took out the money to buy my wife’s Christmas present. I could see that she was married, and wished that somebody went to the trouble that I was for my spouse to see that she had a good Christmas. I revealed my plans to the young lady because of the amount of money that I was taking out in cash, which most people wouldn’t feel comfortable carrying around with them. I explained that this was the only way I could keep the present a secret from my wife with the hope of lasting till Christmas Day.
She let out several long gasps as she counted the money in stacks of hundred-dollar bills and I could tell that she wished for the same kind of cloak and dagger type maneuvers from her own spouse. I told her to be patient, that if she could stay married for a quarter of a century like my wife and I have, that such a thing would be possible in her own future. She smiled, at that and seemed to perk up as she lost track of her count and had to start all over again.
For what Christmas means to me, CLICK HERE and learn what my favorite Christmas song is and why. I don’t think I will ever tire of Christmas morning, and waking up to unleash the many devious plots that I had been pondering for months toward all the people in my family that were carefully concealed acts of espionage designed to make them happy. I truly enjoy those magical mornings of cold winter delight as for just a moment the world takes a deep breath and enjoys the company of one another. And I truly love surprising people, especially my wife, since she is so incredibly hard to catch off guard.
In all our years of marriage, there have only been a handful of times that I have been able to “catch” her with a surprise of any worth. Some years it is a treasured book that is hard to get, some years it is a gift that she would never buy for herself. Of recent years, I was able to give her a slick monokini from Victoria Secret that she could wear in the streets of Key West and Cancun without being too over-the-top, and not look like a 17 year-old-girl. Hard to do with her, and not cheap, since she is extremely picky—extremely. That was over four years ago, and I haven’t been able to get her quite that good since—until this year.
Another year, my oldest daughter caught me off-guard with a book called Way of the Fighter, which I had been looking for over 20 years. (CLICK HERE FOR REVIEW) It’s a rare out-of-print book that costs over $100 dollars from used book venders. During one of my trips to Los Angeles as I had time to kill from my business there, I spent entire days at the large used book stores on Brand Boulevard looking for a copy of that book from some deceased celebrity’s estate where the kids sold off all the things they thought didn’t have value. But to no avail. Somehow, my daughter had tracked down a copy of that book and gave it to me on Christmas, which to date is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received during all my many Christmases over the years.
But the gist of the gifts have not always been about the money, or how much they cost, it is the value of the thoughts behind them, the scheming all in the name of love that goes on in behalf of coaxing just a bit of joy out of a loved one for just a moment. It is the selfish joy of seeing someone you care about open a gift that you carefully prepared, and plotted to give under the cloak of secrecy for the sustained joy of the gift’s intended recipient.
I suspect Christmas at my house this year will be one of the good ones, and I worked hard to position it that way, and the payday is on the morning of December 25th—and I frankly can’t wait. But as we wait for that fateful day, if there is a freedom fighter in your family, or a Tea Party patriot, a young NASCAR fan, a hopeless romantic, an avid reader, or just a rebellious renegade then might I suggest you give them for Christmas my book, Tail of the Dragon. Aside from a last-minute plug for the book, it is a story that will continue giving well into 2013, and they will love you for it. So if you order one now from the links below, the book should arrive well before shipping companies close down for Christmas, with Saturday the 22nd being the last day. Amazon.com has been sold out for most of December, but my publisher just sent them a heap of books to fill the need. And I’m pretty sure that Barnes and Noble has been able to keep up their stock. So this is just a friendly reminder for the last of those gifts you wish to give that special someone who are truly unique, there is still a chance to put Tail of the Dragon under the tree before Christmas.
For my readers here, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. No matter how dark and dreary things appear at times, it is always the human qualities that are best expressed on Christmas morning that ensure that the human race will always persevere over tyranny and chaos to find joy on a new day as the best of what’s in all of us come out on that wonderful—joyous day of December 25th each and every year.
Rich Hoffman
December 11, 2012
Star Wars: The Old Republic: ‘Deceived’ — A book review relevant to modern America
We live in a dangerous time, the progressive utopia of collectivism is failing dramatically worldwide, and every cog in that machine is collapsing primarily impacting teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses, politicians, and virtually every government employee. The world of progressive vision is failing and the participants are thrashing about like fish just caught and thrown upon a dry deck moments before being cooked over a propane oven—and we all know it. The failures of that society are due to a focus on all the wrong human attributes, and have materialized into massive economic failures. Those who bought into those progressive social fantasies are in store for serious social unrest and are now beginning to panic like guests on the Titanic once it had been realized that the ship will sink—slowly, and they will all find themselves soon in the freezing water fighting for their lives.
People like me, and my readers here knew as soon as the ship of America hit the iceberg, that the ship would sink, and we immediately took action to save ourselves. We knew that when America was faced with life or death in the icy water that it would take individual effort to save ourselves, and collectivism of any kind would result in drowning. We were wise to not embed ourselves into any collectivism, so that when the ship of our nation sank, we could swim freely, and be away from the chaos—driven by shock that will surely follow.
But it is painful to see my fellow countrymen suffer needlessly, because I tried to warn them—we all did. But they did not listen—expectantly. They thought we were pulling their leg, that we were “conspiracy theorists” that we were radical right-wingers—which of course does not justify why we are prepared for the detriment of the fiscal cliff, and they are not. I was asked the other day what I do to stay sane during the whole ordeal, and I replied that I read. In fact, I read a lot. Right now, I’m averaging three books a week, completing one about every 3 to 4 days. The only exception is that I spent about a week and a half on War and Peace, and before that, about the same amount of time on The Golden Bough.
Out of all the books that I have read lately however, one book jumped out at me as being wonderfully reflective of our times here in modern America, and how I personally feel about it. Oddly enough, that novel was a Star Wars book from The Old Republic series called Deceived which takes place 3650 years before the action of the popular films that are so well-known. I found that book to be extremely relevant to what is happening all across the contemporary earth, particularly in United States politics. The gist of the book is that the Sith Empire has made a move against the Republic stronghold of Coruscant to destroy the Jedi Temple who are the guardians of peace and justice throughout that fictionalized universe in events that took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The villain of the novel utters to the Jedi prior to the Sith attack, “Our time has come. For three hundred years we prepared; we grew stronger while you rested in your cradle of power believing your people were safe and protected. You were trusted to lead the Republic, but you were deceived, as our powers of the dark side have blinded you…you were deceived and now your Republic shall fall.”
I couldn’t help but be a little haunted by how relevant, and current some of the drama was in that novel. It was extremely compelling and I highly recommend reading this fine book, even if science fiction is not the normal preferred type of reading material. Deceived is a novel that explores what happens to people on the microcosm and macrocosm of political failure and how it affects individuals and multi species demographics across the face of an entire galaxy. I enjoy most of the Star Wars books for the obvious reasons of big ideas, and fun fantasy, but this Deceived novel was quite impressive. The novel follows the events of the attack shown in the above video advertising the new MMO computer game from Bioware titled Star Wars: The Old Republic. And no, Old Republic is not just a simple video game—it cost $200 million to produce and counting, and is the absolute cutting edge standard in online computer game play. It is stunningly epic.
Ultimately, the novel hit a theme that I spend a lot of time considering, and that is how do you re-build a society once it has crumbled? What do you do when it is realized that the ship of society that we are all floating on is destined to sink into the abyss? What is the proper method of maintaining integrity in the face of so much devastation and destruction? For me, the ideas were explored in the novel Deceived and were wonderfully relevant, and a much-needed vacation from the treacherous events of the real world, and the many plots of destruction that are unfolding upon the American landscape where it is now obvious that we have all been Deceived in nearly the exact way that the Sith characterized in that very good Star Wars novel from the Old Republic Era.
Don’t forget, Friday, December 14th is Star Wars Dress up day. Support Katie Goldman. (CLICK HERE)
Rich Hoffman
December 10, 2012
David P. Little Protests at Boehner’s Office: Lap dog reporters get their bellies scratched
I always imagined that activist David P. Little from Progress Ohio who came after me personally a couple of years ago, looked a lot like Jeffery Stec who is currently parading all over the Lakota School District with Karen Mantia attempting to cushion the blow of their next tax increase attempt using their “Community Conversations” campaign. Jeffery is a younger guy who worked on the streetcar issue in downtown Cincinnati—one of those progressive utopian projects designed by Agenda 21 to be a people mover once high taxes and excessive regulation nudge people back into the cities where authorities can have more control over populations and their behavior. No, David P. Little is not what I imagined once I saw recent pictures of him. 2 years ago Darryl Parks and I exposed the progressive activist on 700 WLW after Little directly attacked my character calling me a “wealthy businessman” (sound familiar) among other things for my opposition to the Lakota School Levy. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THAT EPISODE.
The videos below are from Progress Ohio so it can be seen what kind of people are involved in that organization.
After the incident I communicated with Little through email, as I was just a bit enraged over the incident. Up to that point I hadn’t yet become the target of leftist progressive radicals, so they really didn’t know what to make of me in a conflict. I didn’t imagine that Little was just another “flower child” from the sun-baked 60’s generation, which is what he has turned out to be. (CLICK HERE TO SEE HIM.) I thought he was a young guy like Stec trying to make a name for himself with progressive politics. In that story, Little representing Progress Ohio did a “hit” piece on me that Michael Clark from the Cincinnati Enquirer tipped me off to, and I was thankful that he did. Back then, Clark and I got along fine, and fairly and he gave me the heads up to what Little was doing against me. Sadly, just a few years later when a similar “hit” piece was being assembled against me after the third levy defeat, Clark played the other side of the fence as many people warned me he would, so it wasn’t a big surprise, just a disappointment in such predictable human behavior. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. However over the David Little incident, Clark came through which allowed me to answer the story right out of the gate.
Well, David Little has been back in West Chester politics as he was recently heading up a protest outside of John Boehner’s office urging the Speaker of the House to cut the industrial military complex that is “nation building” throughout the world in lieu of the upcoming “fiscal cliff.” Little at the protest argued that there would be more money for things like education, and public employees if the military industry in America were diminished to nothing and all the evil contractors would perish into joblessness. Here is the link to the Pulse Journal article from the reporter covering the story.
http://www.pulsejournal.com/news/news/group-rallies-outside-boehners-local-office/nTPZ3/
I don’t blame the Pulse Journal for not doing proper research into who David Little was. When Little came after me way back then that particular reporter was probably drawing in coloring books in grade school, as the reporter turn-over rate at the Pulse Journal is excessively high, and their editorial staff has been looking for lapdogs to act as public relations spokesman for Lakota and other community advocate groups. So the young reporter wouldn’t know the history of Little and his involvement in Lakota, or myself over the years.
Back when I first encountered Little I only argued that costs needed to be brought down in public education. Since then I have learned what groups like Progess Ohio and public education really have in mind for America, and I have been very vocal about it, which is why many of the reporters who used to speak to me on a regular basis no longer do, because everyone’s comfort level has been smashed when dealing with the actual facts of these stories. The Pulse Journal as a paper would never reveal how radical Progress Ohio is or their progressive philosophy of undermining The United States with mush minded ideas and pixy dust politics. But I have went on record calling Little and the groups he fronts for what I think of them, which of course leads to tension—which is my right to do since it was they who drew blood first.
It was cute to see 15 miscreants show up at Boehner’s office with David Little as the spokesman and argue for the dismantling of the military complex in America to pay for a debt that progressive politicians have intentionally driven up to cause the current financial crises in the first place. The debt is being driven by the old Cloward and Piven strategy of economic collapse to force “change” which is what this whole fiscal cliff idea really comes down to. The economic perils are part of an attack offensive driven by progressive politics and it is good to see that David Little is at the forefront of the movement.
It is sad that The Enquirer and the Pulse Journal did not report the activity of David Little for what it was, but subtly attempted to pile on the opposition against Boehner as the fiscal cliff nears with the opinion of a fossilized flower child and his progressive philosophy of destruction. But in these days of social media and changing roles, it is the citizen journalists who are tasked with the traditional roles of watchdog observation, as the current crop of reporters are in league with the masters of destruction implementing a plot of terror that is quietly lethal all because such positions are convenient.
Rich Hoffman
